


How the Dead Men Wake

by windfallswest



Series: Woods and Waters Wild [15]
Category: Alias, Andromeda, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Ghost in the Shell, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Northern Exposure, Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, YuYu Hakusho
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-25
Updated: 2010-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:04:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yusuke Urameshi: deadbeat, dead-head. Dead.</p><p><i>Heart of Darkness</i>, Jarvis Station, Mustafar: 3514</p>
            </blockquote>





	How the Dead Men Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by my minion, [](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/)**htebazytook**.

Yusuke Urameshi: deadbeat, dead-head. Dead.

"Wait. I'm confused." Yusuke looked around. "Where the hell am I?"

"Where did he go?" asked the stupefied doctor whose hands were hovering over an empty stretcher. He blinked at the oxygen mask lying on it by his left elbow, trying to rid himself of the after-images. "I'm almost certain there was a patient here a minute ago."

The EMTs were cowed. Simon watched them scratching their heads and endeavoured to think past the encroaching pounding in his temples.

"Did you get any ID on him?" he asked.

An EMT shook her head. "No time."

Simon looked at the blood on the stretcher, then nodded.

"Maybe we can get something off the cameras..." They should be good for something. "The hospital will take it from here. You can go now, I guess."

The EMTs shrugged indifferently and filed off somewhere, presumably to dispose of the stretcher and get cleaned up. Simon turned to the duty nurse.

"Arabella. Can you do me a favour?"

"Sure, honey." Arabella's smile was slightly dazed. She shook her ringletted head to clear it. "What do you need?"

"Can you find that kid for me? See if he has any relatives, anyone we can call?"

"Or anyone who might have sprung him." Simon looked up at the security guard suddenly looming on his right. "Maybe he has a criminal record. From the feeds, it almost looked like a flash grenade."

"Hey," said Yusuke. " _Still_ not answering my question. What the hell?" He scrutinised the rather indistinct scenery without seeming particularly impressed.

An elegant, currently man-shaped entity frowned his pale, perfect mouth at Yusuke.

"This has to be a mistake. Does anyone want to take responsibility for it? Come now, gents, don't be shy."

Yusuke blinked and stared back at the onlookers. Then he started sniggering.

"What?" the entity who had spoken demanded.

"Dude, your _hair_."

"Kanzeon's," someone surmised. "Or one of the Lady's jokes, perhaps."

The first one vented an educated snort. "Never did understand that sort. Child," he addressed Yusuke.

Yusuke pulled a face. "What?" he demanded petulantly. His suspicions were starting to be pricked. This was nuts. Where had be been? Where was he? If those were walls, why were they _wavering_ like that? Yusuke stared, mesmerised. He felt high, like the walls—and—ceilings—and floors—and hey, that bleach-head was definitely babbling at him.

"Whoa." Yusuke took a stumbling step forward towards a fleeting image. Either he'd gone further than he thought or it was coming at him anyway, but suddenly it was much more immediate. Sound, colour, smell, touch, times a thousand times more sensory input than Yusuke would ever have guessed his dumb brain was capable of recognising as it whizzed by, let alone processing and containing.

"Dude," Yusuke said, peering into a pair of blue, unreal eyes peeking from a swaddling of sterile linen and paper. "Whatever this juice is, who told you I was looking?"

Breaking away from the wide, frozen eyes, Yusuke examined what was laid out before him. "Stupid hun dan. Can't you see it?" Without thinking, he stuck his hand into the mess and corrected the mistakes.

"You shouldn't'a done that. Naughty boy." The voice jerked Yusuke out of the picture.

"Go stuff it, powder-head. It was broken. What's the big deal?"

The entity shook his head. "Rules, duck."

Yusuke stretched, clasped his hands behind his head, and turned his shoulder to the entity. Too bad he didn't have a cigarette.

"'m not big on rules."

"Well, that's just too gorram bad, now innit?" The entity was smirking in the corner of Yusuke's eye.

Yusuke craned his head and favoured blondie with his best sincerely reproachful look. _Eat my sarcasm, dingbat, or eat my fist._ Blondie's expression remained indecipherably neutral.

"Rules is serious up here. Seein' as how you broke 'em all to bitty piecies, we're just goin' to have to send you back."

There were nods.

Yusuke shrugged. "Whatev—"

Blink. Light.

_Ouch._

"Hey, watch where you're throwing things!" Yusuke leapt up, brandishing his fist at the room, prepared to use it as soon as he figured out what needed hit.

"Who in three hells of cheese puffs are you?" The question came from a tall, stern-faced woman with a gun at her hip. "Fred! George! Cargo bay, now," she snapped into a wall-comm.

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Coming, o stalwart and leonine!"

"I swear, we didn't do it!"

"If you didn't, then why is there a naked man in my cargo bay?"

Yusuke looked puzzled. Then he looked down.

"What the— Who the— Zaog— Where the houzi de pigu are my trousers?"

Last night, last night; he could swear he didn't get wasted last night. The taste of a trippy dream was still in his mouth—but no, gorram it, and he didn't have a hangover. Or bruises. Okay, on to where. Friggin' enormous crates everywhere. Warehouse? The spaceport was an awful long way from his usual territory. Territory...? "Hey, this isn't funny, what happened to my trousers?"

"Better question: why are you in my cargo hold?" The woman was still looking at him, all in all with a rather unmistakeable lack of enthusiasm. There was some mug-faced goon glaring over her shoulder.

"You got a problem or something?" Yusuke snapped.

"Don't talk to her like that!" protested the orange-haired lughead. Stupid as he looked.

"What are you, her boyfriend?"

The moron yowlped indignantly. "Eew, gross."

"Shut it, bro." She turned to Yusuke, who made a valiant effort at not quailing under the weight of her displeasure.

"You're standing mother-naked, on my ship, in deep space. I'd consider watching my mouth," she remarked indifferently, which nevertheless had a quelling effect on the conversation. She tucked a lock of long, brown hair behind her ear and kept on staring at Yusuke, waiting. Sheesh.

A clanging sound heralded the arrival of two identical red-haired young men decked in dirt-born freckles and an air of irrepressibility.

"'Ello miz capt'n ma'am. Reporting as ordered," sang one, bouncing up to the woman and saluting.

"Cor!" His brother elbowed him and pointed at Yusuke, who was somewhat taken aback. "There _is_ a nekkid man."

"Blimey! What are you doing 'ere?"

"Cap'n's gonna take the xiongmao niao out of you, you know."

"Won't help that you're starkers an' gorgeous."

"She's an 'ard-'earted woman, she is."

"Like iron."

"Impervious to our charms." They aimed identically alarming woebegone expressions at her.

"Entirely," the woman broke in. "Either of you care to explain this?" She fixed the duo with a hard look.

"Would if I could."

"Never seen him in me life."

"What makes you think it was us?" one of them chirruped cheerily.

"Oy, George, don't think you should've said that," whispered the other. They watched the woman as though she was a pacing tiger.

She gave them a flat look. "I think to myself: no pants, now, who are the likely culprits?"

"But we dunno who 'e is!"

"Swear on me life."

"And me berth."

"And all the starry heavens a-roundin' us."

"And mum's crumb cake."

"And those little plums we like—"

"Actually, it's just you with the plums, George."

"—may the dewies swoop down and chop me head in two."

They nodded emphatically, in unison. The woman rested a brief, sceptical glance on them, then moved on to Yusuke.

Yusuke backed up a step.

"Hey, don't look at me. I didn't do anything."

"Then how did you get here?'

"How the hell should I know?" Yusuke erupted. "Last thing I remember was...was... Fuck! I know I wasn't here, gorram it."

"Having a little memory problem, are we? Well, we can get around that easily enough. Fred, George, pull our guest's file. Find out who he is, if you don't know already. Go with them," she told Yusuke.

Yusuke looked down at the helpfully-placed crate in front of him and back up at his audience.

"Nuh-uh! Get me some clothes first!"

The lunkhead was sniggering again. Yusuke glared at him. "Think this is funny, do you? Come over here and I'll make you laugh all right!"

The woman placed a restraining arm in front of her windmilling brother.

"Go borrow some clothes from Oz, bro. You three. Go. _Now._ "

"Yes, ma'am," they chorused and shot out of the room with all the alacrity of herders caught in a stampede of man-eating ostriches.

Once escape had been achieved, Yusuke, Fred and George stopped in the corridor to catch their collective breath. Yusuke leaned against the gooseflesh-raising wall and thought that if he hadn't thought his life was normal before, he'd been hugely mistaken.

As if to confirm this, one of the twins stuck out his hand with comical propriety.

"My name's George. This 'ere's me brother, Fred."

Baffled, Yusuke shook hands. "Yusuke Urameshi." Well, he remembered that, at least.

"Right, well, Yusuke, welcome aboard the good ship _Heart of Darkness._ "

"Forgive our captain's bitchiness—"

"—she's only like that all the time—"

"—got a bit of a stick up, has our Shizuru, if you know what I mean."

"But she's a good enough sort."

"Probably won't space you."

"Here, follow us."

"Where're we going?" Yusuke asked as he padded warily along between them, his usual screen of hostility temporarily beaten back by confusion and the lack of a satisfying target. On the plus side, he hadn't seen anyone yet he couldn't pound into beagle-burger.

"To our magic shop, of course," replied one of them, he'd already lost track.

The magic shop turned out to be a state-of-the-art console on the bridge, looking both out of place and terribly misused. Wires scraggled over it connecting bits to other bits and it evinced an obvious lack of dusting. Directly above the flat blanks of its projection grids were some very large windows. Yusuke stood in the doorway and stared down the pinprick stars, naked as he was without the buffering atmosphere to cover their bare hydrogen fires.

"Okay, _what the hell is this?_ " Yusuke demanded. Well, shouted.

"That's Bella Mordico. To the left is the Tired Nebula. The really bright one under it is Icona. Right—"

Yusuke transferred his blank stare to the new speaker, probably the, the pilot, hadn't someone said this was a ship? well that would explain the stars, who looked more perturbed by the hands over his mouth than by the spectacle of a naked man jumping around and invading his personal domain. At least to the extent he seemed capable of being perturbed, which is to say his expression (what could be seen of it) was mildly puzzled.

George and Fred smile at Yusuke over the pilot's head. His hair was reddish, like everyone else's Yusuke'd seen so far except the captain's. Normal build, which would put him some odd inches over Yusuke's height, _also_ like everyone else, dammit.

"Yusuke, meet Mark McHenry," said the one on the right.

"Sorry, mate," the one on the left apologised as they lifted their hands, patting McHenry on the shoulder and exposing a dusting of freckles across his face. "But you wouldn't want to scare off our stowaway, would you?"

"Or is he your stowaway?"

McHenry blinked, tilted his head, and gazed disconcertingly at Yusuke, or possibly just his left ear. Yusuke put his fists on his hips, refusing to be embarrassed.

One of the twins rolled his eyes and grabbed Yusuke's elbow, pulling him into the room. The other seated himself and brought up a colourful display. He tapped something. Then he tapped something else.

"Out of range. Mark!" He slapped McHenry's foot as it jiggled nearby on the dash.

McHenry cracked an eye. "Ten minutes, give or take," he said cryptically, then appeared to go back to sleep.

"Bilgewater," the twin muttered darkly.

"Does this mean I can have some trousers now, or do I have to get nasty?" Gorrammit, it was _cold_ up here.

"If it'd make you more comfortable, we could all take ours off," the unoccupied twin volunteered.

"Captain said no more orgies on the bridge," McHenry reminded them.

"Who said anything about an orgy? All I suggested was a bit of good-natured exhibitionism."

"Please don't," someone squeaked from the corridor behind them. "Here."

A pair of trousers was thrust into the room. Yusuke snatched them and hastily put them on, cinching the drawstring tight. They actually fit, wonder of wonders. Couldn't be from any of this lot, though.

"That's better. Hey!' Yusuke dashed back to the twins' display. "What the _hell_?"

"That's a warrant, that is."

"I can see that, Fred. All the way from Osiris."

"Seems we have a fugie, dunnit, George?"

"Hey, lemme see that." Yusuke brushed hair out of his eyes; time to get it cut again. But gorram annoying and weird besides; he always slicked it back. It looked more badass that way. He didn't even feel any gel residue in it.

The words _attack, hospital, accomplices, armed_ and _dangerous_ filed past in neat, orderly, official script.

"Stuff my intestines with tomatoes." Yusuke tried to keep his face under control. This just kept getting stranger. "That can't be right."

"Well, let's just take a look at that permanent record, now, shall we?" George chirped. A host of incomprehensible characters overran the display, punctuated occasionally by warning colours that flashed briefly like pennons in the wind.

"Hey—! You can't do that!" Yusuke protested.

"'Course we can." George scrolled the display to reveal an image of Yusuke's glowering face, the same one that had graced the arrest warrant, minus the side view. "Yusuke Urameshi, sixteen; numerous infractions—don't look like 'e's been to class too regular. Missing two months, warrant for arrest, et cetera."

Yusuke had been perusing the list of his offences—enough to make a respectable citizen cringe and missing some of the more interesting ones by benefit of being a list of only those times he'd got caught, he somehow knew—when this remark jerked him back to attention.

"Okay, that's _really_ stupid. I was on Osiris yesterday." Of this he was unshakeably certain, for no concrete reason.

"Don't know where you were yesterday, mate, but this is Fransmun. Osiris is at least eighteen jumps away, plus some heavy RS time," Fred added.

"What the _fuck_?" Yusuke swept a frustrated hand through the holoscreen. "Damn load of crap."

 

Yusuke scowled. He scowled at the ceiling. He scowled at the walls. He scowled at the floor and his feet. Feet looked weird if you scowled at them for about eighty hours. If he were less of a stubborn bastard he'd have stopped scowling at the guy standing in front of the door who had been introduced only as "Oz" and who was less responsive than the King of Londinium's Castle Guard.

For the moment, Yusuke was quiet, resting his voice after his last twenty-minute bout of raillery. It had taken very little time for Yusuke's protestations to stop being about how unfair it was to be locked in here on general principle and to start being very personally about getting this Oz guy to react. Mostly people noticed Yusuke when he wanted them to, and a lot of times when he didn't. So what was this, karma? _Bite my ass._ Yusuke's nerves were wearing thin. And not his short-fused nerves, his limited stores of patience that were how he'd survived the serious hard-cases on Capitol City's long-streets. But that wasn't really patience. Patience sat and waited. Yusuke had never been good at sitting still, and he did his waiting while he was swinging. He couldn't even _sleep_ with those rutting eyes on him.

Yusuke ground his teeth. Then he punched the wall, which did his hand a lot of good, thanks. He stood there and looked at his fist planted therapeutically on the metal wall. From this angle, he should've been able to see the knife scar on the inside of his forearm. He opened his left hand: no calluses from pounding half-brains. No wonder his feet looked weird; he ran a rusty nail clear through the right one when he was ten.

Gor-rutting- _damn_ it.

 _This can't be hell. The walls aren't wavy enough._ Yusuke decided not to examine where that last thought had come from. He could feel the eyes resting tirelessly on his back.

"What, did she cut your tongue out?" Yusuke whirled. "Or are you just missing a little something up here?" he tapped his head. "Back-bred freak. Answer me! What in seventy hells of cream cheese does it take to make you unclench your jaw and take the stick out of your butt?"

Yusuke had been unconsciously advancing, and now there was very little space between his face and Oz's un-freaking-changeable one. Just look at that; he did breathe. And his eyes followed Yusuke. Well, they crossed a little when Yusuke kissed him.

It was supposed to be a tactic: confuse him, get your hand on his neck. Then a headlock and a sucker punch to the gut. That was the plan.

Plan, meet Oz-tongue. Definitely all there, that tongue. Yusuke started backwards a bit but Oz followed him and Yusuke's brain was melting in short order. _Hey, you wanted responsive_ , some corner of his mind was snickering, to which Yusuke responded by telling it very firmly to _shut up_.

When the kiss broke, Yusuke had the satisfaction of seeing Oz flushed and panting. Also slightly ruffled. Pupils dilated; Yusuke could tell because he could pretty much look straight into Oz's eyes. This must be the mysterious trouser-donor, then; everyone else on this ship had a foot and a half on either of them.

"I'm still not letting you out," Oz said. His voice was notably husky.

"So you can talk after all."

"Yeah." Oz leaned in for a kiss Yusuke surprised himself by giving. This was almost as good as beating the crap out of him would be, though they'd undoubtedly get to that. Right now, Yusuke's hormones were industriously feeding his youthful libido ideas. He didn't do a lot of this. The guys who went in for the macho thing were actually sleezier than the girls. Everyone else was either afraid of him or wanted to grind him into the pavement. Keiko ground him into the pavement, the little brat. Did he _ask_ anyone for a bossy sister? It sure took the fun out of having a lush like Atsuko for a mom. He was too distracted to notice he was remembering.

Oz had Yusuke pinned to the wall now by a grip on his upper arms. Their teeth clashed in a clumsy, devouring kiss with Yusuke straining upwards after Oz's mouth, his body. Every inch of Yusuke's skin ached for contact. Oz's hands were almost painful bands of fire. Yusuke's heart hammered like he was throwing down with four flash junkies on a fresh high. He could _feel_ the effort Oz was using to pin him. In a minute, he was going to start up the wall for leverage.

"Whoa."

Yusuke opened his eyes to see Oz pulling away. The room seemed somehow dimmer now than with his eyes closed.

After Oz stepped back, Yusuke stayed leaning against the wall for a minute to regain himself. Staring at Oz with an intensity at odds with his wild ranting earlier. Five seconds ago, he was kissing Oz like he wanted to climb down his throat. Intense. _Yeah, that's the word._

Oz cleared his throat. "Captain said she'd talk with you in the morning."

"And you couldn't just tell me that?" Yusuke was shouting again. He looked peeved. And kind of lickable.

Oz shrugged. Yusuke just sighed.

"So what, I'm supposed to wait around?"

"You could sleep," Oz suggested. He decided not to confide Shizuru's hope that Yusuke would disappear in a convenient manner during the night. It might be nice, but it would be more weird. In Oz's experience, weird generally led to bad. So far, they probably had enough bad coming. Oz rubbed his hand guiltily on the seam of his coveralls. If Yusuke disappeared, it wouldn't matter if he'd seen Oz's eyes doing something embarrassing like spinning.

 

Morning came quietly, as it does in space. Yusuke had finally drifted off at some point during the night. Oz was sitting on the floor, half meditating and half watching Yusuke sprawling restlessly across the spare bunk. Well, mostly watching Yusuke by the time Shizuru's steps sounded down the corridor.

"Hey." Oz clambered to his feet and went over to nudge Yusuke. "Rise'n shine."

Yusuke started awake. Oz almost expected to be jumped again, but Yusuke merely staggered upright. He looked both better and worse than he had last night, dark hair tousled and lines on his face like he had a headache.

When Oz stood between Yusuke and Shizuru, he could feel the difference, which was more than a little disturbing. He'd spent a goodly portion of his life to date purposefully _not_ honing that particular set of sensory perceptions, and now here came a fellow popping out of the ether fairly jumping up and down with unusualness. He wanted to talk with McHenry, though as like as not there'd be no extraordinary information gained in the exchange. It was a fair cut; Oz had erected his own obfuscatory barriers often enough. The two of them didn't acknowledge the mutual unconventionality. Everyone else just assumed that if there was something a mite off about how they behaved with one another it was because they were fucking. Which they did, from time to time.

Shizuru was asking Yusuke to account for himself. Surprisingly enough, he met her eyes solidly and said, "Fine."

There was a brief silence in which Yusuke failed to waver.

"Thinking's not really my strong suit, but I was trying to figure things so they made some kind of sense. I'm good, but I'm still just a two-bit street brawler, I know that. Not a kidnapper or terrorist or whatever the feds want to arrest me for."

Yusuke held out his hands palm down, flexed them into fists, then splayed them over the air again.

"No calluses. No scars, and my memory may be a bit hazy, but I _distictly_ remember being circumcised." Judging by the colour he was turning, Yusuke had just thought better of that last comment; but he plunged on.

"It ain't natural. All I can reckon is that the government's been experimenting on me somehow. Messing with my head. I don't like that. Those sons of monkey-lovers ain't gonna get another chance at me."

"So what am I supposed to do with you?" Shizuru asked in her tired voice.

Yusuke shrugged. "Drop me at the nearest settlement. One ball of rock's about the same as another; I'll make my way well enough."

"Assuming I don't space you. We got problems enough without your sort of trouble."

Yusuke snorted. "Oh, please. I could take everyone on this wreck. Besides, what about that juicy reward the Alliance put on my hide?"

"The Alliance never paid anyone they didn't have to." A bitter smile twisted her mouth. "It's not good business."

Shizuru gave the impression of weighing Yusuke with her always oddly serious eyes. He thrust his jaw forward and neither relaxed nor tensed, but more like both at once. Like how Oz looked at an engine needed fixing or the twins got with one of their hacks.

"I don't know what my crew have told you," Shizuru shot a significant glance at Oz, "but I don't throw innocent people to the wolves. Our next port is Jarvis Station 'bout a day out yet. Not much in the way of traffic, though, and it's a scraggy piece of lese. I'd be willing to let you work your passage to someplace like Wexley. Ships there'll be more like to be headed inwards."

Oz's eyebrows hiked up to his hairline and started crawling backwards.

"Thanks, but I'll do alright on Jarvis."

"You're not going back to Osiris?"

"Hell no. I don't even have an ident card. 'S not like I have much reason to go back anyway."

Shizuru frowned. "What about your mother?"

Yusuke's expression narrowed, then grew elaborately casual in the space of a few blinks.

"If you read my file, you know my mom's young. Without me around she can probably land herself a decent man."

"Well, you're just a ray of sunshine, aren't you?"

"You're pretty dapper there yourself, Shizuru," Oz remarked.

"Can it. And get some sleep. I don't want to waste time lolly-gagging at Jarvis."

From Shizuru that was outright friendly. Oz turned to leave.

"And you, don't think this is a free ride. There's a microscrubber with your name on it, dong ma?"

Oz grinned over his shoulder at Yusuke's bulldozed expression. Shizuru did that to people at first, before the yelling set in. She was a terror of an opportunist.

Instead of heading to his bunk, Oz made his way to the kitchen. From the hair-curling dregs he poured into his mug, Shizuru had made the pot this morning. Oz sprinkled in some herbs and powdered chilli to hide the taste and started water boiling. McHenry must already have been through; he'd butter his bread with axel grease if no one kept it out of reach. Fred and George preferred tea. Kuwabara somnambulated in while Oz was contemplating the last sludgey remnants of his coffee for some sort of protein drink that was more vile even than Oz's herbs.

Oz started humming the Sparky Cola jingle, earning himself a glare from Shizuru's hulking young brother. It was too late, though; now they'd both have it stuck in their heads all day.

"Hey, Kuwabara—" Oz started.

"What?" Kuwabara surled back.

"Nah, nothing."

Oz brought his cup up to finish it off, then took a closer look. He'd washed less sinister things out of _Darkness_ 's engine.

Mark McHenry was, as expected, lolling in the pilot's seat, looking none too awake for the empty mug sitting by his feet on the controls. He acknowledged Oz's arrival with a brief flicker of an eyelid.

"How's Fred's and George's naked stowaway?"

"Yeah, can't believe I missed that."

McHenry smiled. "It was a sight."

"Says he's leaving at Jarvis. Shizuru's put him to work already."

McHenry gazed at the ceiling. Oz stared out the window.

"This is weird."

"Uh-huh."

Oz wished he could ask for something more definite: _he should stay_ or _we're all going to be ground into tiny little protein bits_. Probably, though, McHenry didn't have anything more than Oz did, just a feeling of off-ness seasoned with a pinch of foreboding. It would like as not debark with Yusuke; and any sentiments Oz had about that were the results of pure, physical attraction, not psychic twinges.

 

Despite her noble assertions of not throwing people to the wolves, Yusuke would have found himself standing literally shirtless and bootless on the docks of Jarvis Station but for the creepily exuberant grace of the Weasley twins. The way they eyed him, like a slab of beef, Xao Prime's finest, it was surprising they'd given Yusuke clothes at all. Between the twins' hovering and his thankfully infrequent but still awkward encounters with Oz, Yusuke was more than glad to get away.

The docks were a more familiar sort of freakshow. Yusuke slid smoothly into the reeking, hairy mob. Air was even close and smoggy here.

_First thing is get a job, I guess. Mom'd be so proud._

Finding out who ran this dump was easy. The cops were definitely outnumbered and out-classed by the local goon platoon. Yusuke only had to relieve three strategically chosen passers-by of their spare change before a trio of thugs approached him into an alcove off the main flow of traffic.

"Nice show, kid. You got our attention." The one who spoke sneered down at Yusuke, who was thinking how nice it would have been if he'd had a growth spurt during those missing two months.

"Who runs this heap of lese?"

The head thug exchanged glances with his fellows. They laughed. He turned back to Yusuke. "Can't come to Jarvis not knowin' who the boss is. Everyone knows. What're you playing' at?"

"Just call it curiosity. What's the big deal?"

The thug stepped closer.

"Who you workin' for?"

"Nobody."

"Really." The backup singers hulked taller, if that as possible. "That's feifei de piyan. I'm gonna ask nice one more ti—"

"Shaddap already," Yusuke shouted as he drove his fist into the head thug's stomach. It was a very gratifying feeling.

The thugs fell on him like towers of shipping crates. Yusuke dodged and swung and reeled unreservedly. One of the thugs caught him an uppercut on the point of his chin and sent him flying along a graceful arc through a wall or door or something.

 _Shoddy construction_ , Yusuke thought happily.

Yusuke had landed on someone. Four rather more serious-looking customers were rounding on him, in addition to the three thugs crashing hostilely Yusuke-wards from the docks. There were several more moments filled with the sounds of yelling, grunting and assorted percussive variants. Bright-eyed, Yusuke scanned the hallway. Empty. He picked up a body indiscriminately by the scruff of its neck and shook it.

"Hey," Yusuke demanded. "Where's your boss?"

The man coughed weakly. "You will...never make it."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Just tell me how to find the guy."

"I will assist you."

A heavy hand fell on Yusuke's shoulder. Yusuke whirled and sprang backwards into the iron grips of another batch of toadies. _Gorrammit. I didn't even hear the bastards coming._

"Hey, hands off! Where are you taking me?" blustered Yusuke as they frog-marched him down the hall.

"You will see," replied the dark man who had spoken before. It did not sound like _we're going to lock you up and leave you for the rats._ It didn't sound like _we shall feed you milk and honey and juggle goslings for your amusement_ , either.

Yusuke did not succeed in shrugging off his guards until they arrived at a large, well-lit room. In the brief pause while they'd waited for the chamber's wide doors to slide open, Yusuke had noticed that the men on either side of it were not lawmen but more of the local colour.

 _That was quick,_ thought Yusuke, locking eyes with the woman enthroned at the back of the room towards whom no one's back was turned.

If cubic footage was as valuable here as in a city, this bint was loaded. The room was more wide than deep. A serried rank of desks and equipment lined the walls. Upwards of twenty people, some species of drone, scurried busily around the edges. The space left open in the middle was big enough to hold the entire apartment Yusuke'd shared with his mother.

 _Man, it's just some old lady._ Yusuke fought off disappointment. _At least she'll be easy to take. I'll feel kinda guilty beating her up._ King of a space-station was a step up from street punk, even if it had a doofy name like Jarvis. _Maybe she'll fork it over if I pound the rest of her goons._

"Who is this?" the woman asked.

"The name's Yusuke Urameshi."

"It appears as though he bested Master Cee and seven of our men," the brown, hairless pillar of a man who had overseen Yusuke's apprehension fairly tolled. "He seemed to be looking for you."

She eyed Yusuke. He tried not to squirm. What was it with women on the Rim?

"He has found me. I believe I can handle him from here." As she spoke, the boss-lady separated herself from her elegantly carved, low-backed throne.

_Ti wo de pigu, I think that thing's solid wood._

Boss-lady came towards him across the floor. At her signal, Yusuke's wall of guards melted away into the bulkheads, leaving him uncomfortably exposed.

 _That wasn't a security blanket, moron,_ Yusuke growled at himself as boss-lady circled him predatorily. Yusuke clenched his fists; his knuckles were bleeding from the brawl earlier. _Old hag or not, I'll fight her if I have to._

"What did you want to see me about?" boss-lady asked, coming into view again on Yusuke's other side.

Yusuke smirked back at her in lieu of twitching like a landed fish. "Lookin' for a job."

"Oh? Anything particular in mind?"

"Yeah. I was thinking about yours."

She laughed.

Yusuke bristled. "What's so funny, grandma?"

"Are you challenging me?"

"Why not?"

"It will be your funeral," she said indifferently.

"We'll see, old bat."

Boss-lady stepped back, into the middle of the cleared space, and gestured graciously for Yusuke to take his position.

"Hey, what's your name anyway?" he asked.

An audible snicker ran its way around the room.

"Irina Derevko," boss-lady replied politely.

"Great. Now that we've got the formalities over with..."

He took the first swing, and that was about all Yusuke could say for himself. Derevko was really making him pay for that _old bat_ comment. Some people had no sense of humour. Yusuke could barely avoid half of what she threw at him, and he had a sinking suspicion that she was going easy.

 _Gorrammit, I hate being toyed with._ He thought he saw a pattern, though, maybe. Just a little bit—

" _Hah!_ "

Yusuke put his weight behind the punch. It connected—slid— _fuck_.

Derevko turned her head back towards him, blood from his fist smeared redly on her cheek. With ruthless precision, Derevko took hold of his arm and flipped him over her head. Blood raced to Yusuke's head as he sailed through the air and tried to brace for impact.

When Yusuke landed, he wasn't braced for impact. He came down neatly, rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, and let loose with something that almost bowled Derevko over. _What the hell was that?!_

"What a wonderful surprise."

Derevko was smiling now. While Yusuke was still boggling at his hands like he'd found them goosing the plumber, she hit him some sort of chop to the back of the neck. Yusuke staggered. Derevko had no trouble dodging his retaliatory swipe, but it got her off his back for a minute. He straightened and took a few steps, trying to find his rhythm. There was an odd sort of swing it always took him a while to get.

That was all the more reprieve Yusuke got. Derevko was on the outside, and she was pressing her advantage. He couldn't get around her enough to sneak a punch of his own in edgewise. _And defence isn't my strong point._ Usually he'd say it was time to cut and run, but there was nowhere to go that had better ground. Nowhere he could get to, anyway. Derevko was between Yusuke and the door.

All of a sudden, Yusuke felt the wall at his back. Derevko's fist slammed into it where Yusuke's head had been a second earlier. Then her knee was in his groin and his feet were swept from under him. When the throbbing receded, Yusuke was on his face under Derevko, who had his arms locked behind his back in a surprisingly strong grip.

"Very promising. If you agree to behave, I'll let you live."

"Define behave," Yusuke growled.

"Stop trying to kill me; it's a wasted effort. And do as I say."

"Not too good at that last part. Wanna make an effort to specify?"

Derevko slammed his head back into the floor.

"I'm offering to make you my apprentice, minor league."

Yusuke smirked into the metal decking. "Hell, that's the best offer I've had all day. Now wouldja get off my back already?"

"Among other things, I see I'll have to teach you manners." Yusuke's head met plating again.

"Hey!" Yusuke protested. "Lighten up, old bat."

Eventually, Yusuke was permitted to stand. Then he was crowded off down the hall to another room and told to stay put. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and looked around.

"I've seen bigger closets," Yusuke grumbled to the bare walls. He tried the door: locked, and the terminal: dead. Great. This apprentice gig was fun already. And what the hell was that, when he'd been fighting her? And the rest of it?

 

"Heard you have a job needs doing."

Irina Derevko's face came alight with pleasure. "Captain Kuwabara. It's so good to see you again." She smiled warmly.

With effort, Shizuru managed not to flinch away from Derevko's hospitality. She wanted a smoke. McHenry was a reassuring presence behind her. Oz probably would've been smarter, but they needed a new flow regulator, among other things, and Oz insisted on checking it out himself. Kuwabara was overseeing the unloading of their cargo. For her part, Shizuru didn't want to spend a second more than she had to on Jarvis. Besides, Shizuru fancied McHenry unnerved Derevko, just a bit.

"You're looking well," Derevko continued.

"And you haven't changed at all," responded Shizuru.

"That is kind of you to say. But on to business."

Derevko gestured them to follow her to a desk. Shizuru crossed the eerily vacant floor, feeling as she always did that someone had her in the crosshairs. Not unlikely.

"This is what you're looking for."

It bore a vague resemblance to a tomato. Shizuru picked up the plastic flimsy on which some hand had sketched it and tried to discern what was so remarkable about it.

"How many do you want?" Shizuru asked. "And should I pick up lettuce while I'm at it?"

"Just the one. It's approximately the size of an eggplant. I'll provide you with a portable refrigeration unit for its transport. You'll find it growing in a scientific research facility on Casanoi; that's most of the information I have. I will admit, I was happy to see you dock. Your crew is well suited to this mission."

Shizuru lifted her eyes to meet Derevko's. They were both smiling and brown, like her space-weathered face, and sincerely charming as her smile.

"I have two questions."

"How much, and what are you up against?"

"You guess better than I do. Now tell me if it's worth my time."

 

By the time someone finally deigned to notice him again, Yusuke had dropped into a fitful doze. He woke to the sound of the door swishing open and blinked the orange and green lump in front of him into focus as his (George's) jacket slung over the back of the chair for the unplugged computer terminal.

Yusuke sat up.

"Who're you?"

"Irina Derevko requests your presence."

Yusuke rolled his eyes. "Requests my ass." Heaving a sigh, he stood and grabbed his jacket.

"Right. Well, lead on already. I hope this is a dinner date."

It wasn't. It was him alone in a room with a woman who, Yusuke was increasingly convinced, ate people's eyeballs while they were still raw and dangly with nerve endings.

"What do you know of a man named Terrence Cee?"

"Never heard of him. You got anything to eat around here?"

"Do you recall a blonde man? Wiry, a little taller than you," Derevko tried again.

Yusuke thought a minute. "From this morning or whatever? Doesn't sound like anyone I beat the crap out of."

"Terrence is my lieutenant. He claims a wall fell on him." She paused. "You are either very good or very lucky."

"So whadda you think?" asked Yusuke, not twitching from his deliberately casual pose against the wall. They were in a smaller room than Derevko's main hall, though it still kicked the one Yusuke had been relegated to all to blazes.

"The Alliance has been circulating a high-priority warrant for your arrest. The charges are fabricated, of course. But the question remains: what do you have that they want so badly?"

 _She knows something! I'm sure of it._ Now, how to make her share...

"Who cares? Maybe I picked the wrong guy's pocket. All those Alliance bastards are crazy anyway."

Derevko didn't look convinced or fooled or exasperated or anything else encouraging. She looked like she was onto him.

 _Let me know how that works out for you,_ Yusuke thought grimly and closed his eyes. _Maybe you can give_ me _a clue_.

 

"Alright, people. We have a job." Shizuru strode purposefully onto the control deck. She tossed a small chit and a key-card to Fred, then plunked the refrigerator down. "Run that through the bug-scanner, tell me what it says. Then take a look at the key-card. We're going after a very special tomato."

George blinked at her. "No, really. What's the job?"

Shizuru sighed. "Never mind. Is Oz back yet?"

"Not only is he back, he's almost finished installing his whatsits," replied Fred cheerily. He leaned over and watched as George sat down beside him and deposited Derevko's chit in one of the numerous and indistinguishable contact ports.

"Great. McHenry, take us out as soon as he's done."

"Aye aye, cap'n."

 

"I want to show you something. Come."

Derevko led him through the echoing corridors to a room. It was as bare as the halls except for a pedestal in the middle. On the pedestal was a book, brown and wavery-paged with age. In the book was a poem. It was backwards. There was laughter in Yusuke's head.

"It's gibberish."

"No, it's code," Derevko corrected him. "This book was written by a prophet almost a thousand years ago. The language he used is practically extinct."

"Great, so what's so important about it?" Looking at it upside-down didn't provide any grand insights.

"It tells the future."

Derevko watched him closely for his reaction, eyes expectant.

"Sure, old bat; whatever you say." Yusuke rolled his eyes. See, this was why he stayed away from gangs: the nutcases. There was always at least one, and it was usually the guy in charge. "So what does it say? Are we about the be invaded by brain-sucking aliens?"

"This prophecy is about you." Derevko touched the page briefly.

"Yeah, what's it say about me?" Yusuke peered curiously over her shoulder.

Derevko smiled, bad sign. "It says that you will have great power and cause great destruction."

"Well isn't that cheerful."

Just then the comm unit Derevko kept strapped to her wrist beeped. She watched it intently for a minute, then turned to the burly man who'd been blending into the room's far wall.

"Murray, stay with him for a moment. This won't take long."

Murray inclined his shiny brown head. Yusuke sighed. He'd encountered Murray a couple of times since he'd apprehended Yusuke a few days ago. His main function seemed to be guarding things, which he did by fading watchfully into the background, unless Yusuke happened to be around, in which case he shifted tactics to loom pointedly in his direction. If he had to guess, Yusuke would say Murray was less than happy with Derevko's inexplicable adoption of him.

Casting a wary look Murray's direction, Yusuke contemplated the book. It looked more mouldy than ominous, truth to tell. The blocky letters that draggled unevenly across its pages seemed almost misshapen in places. None of it made any more sense than it had before. Power and destruction? _Well, shit_. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Besides no good. Assuming it meant anything anyway. As far as he knew, this was an out-dated cookbook.

Yusuke threw himself against the wall and sighed again. "So what do you think of all this?" he asked, only half-expecting to get an answer. He was _not_ kissing this one, though.

"I do not believe in her prophecy, if that is what you are asking."

"What, you think it's wrong or somethin'? Prophecies go against your religion?"

"I do not believe in such things. I have neither morals nor faith nor scruples," Murray replied, a little pointedly.

"Well, that doesn't leave much. What _do_ you got?"

"Lots and lots of money."

Yusuke laughed. It felt good. "Hey, whatever works for you."

 

"How much longer?" Shizuru firmly quelled her impulse to scan the corridors again. Fred would see them coming long before she could hear them herself and warn them on the comm.

George bit his lip. "Just a few more minutes. This isn't _easy_ , you know. Ah!"

"What?" Shizuru asked anxiously. She leaned forward over his shoulder to peer at the lines of complete gobbledegook.

"...nothing..." George trailed off distractedly.

This was the bad part, George hunched over his tablet doing an on-site hack to open the damn _doors_ with Fred up above watching the security feeds but unable to touch anything. If someone came along, they were royally humped. No guns, no knives, not even a screwdriver. All Shizuru had was the portable refrigeration unit and her back to the door they were trying so frantically to open. Her usual function of 'providing cover' when things went south would pretty much mean throwing _herself_ at the pursuit if this got bollixed. Which, Shizuru admitted to herself, was likely enough. They were already three minutes behind schedule.

Shizuru bit her lip. The oddly garbled din of pop music playing on the only frequency the twins had been able to piggy-back continued uninterrupted in her left ear. Fred and George swore up and down that no one could decipher the encryption algorithms in less than a week, but undetectable it wasn't, apparently, so the peanut gallery was quieter than usual. It only reinforced Shizuru's growing opinion that this was a bigger fish than they usually tried to fry.

The door slid decorously open. Shizuru jumped, expecting to see someone exiting the lab behind it.

"Relax, boss." George winked, winding his uplink cable. "These doors are _insane_. It kept wanting to make noises at us."

"Alarms?"

George shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. I buttoned it up good and proper, though, whatever it was."

"That's all I need to hear." Shizuru stepped forward into the lab and began winding her way through the maze of benches.

"This place is a mess. You'd think scientists would know how to clean up after themselves." George tsked.

"Yeah. You'd think that about grown men, too." Shizuru stopped and looked down.

"How do you _do_ that?" George whined. "You're as bad as Mark sometimes."

Shizuru didn't reply as they both stood mesmerised by the soft blue glow emanating from the overgrown tomato.

"What is it, the fruit of the tree of knowledge?" George asked after a minute.

"If it is, I wouldn't eat it. Remember what it did to life-spans the last time," Shizuru remarked dryly. She dug out the key-card, opened the refrigeration unit, tugged the thing neatly from the vine and deposited it inside. The lock mechanism snicked satisfyingly into place.

"Maybe it'll just turn my hair blue."

"Finally, a way to tell the two of you apart." The idea had the added merit of reducing the number of redheads on her ship.

"I could always nick some of Oz's nanobots."

Shizuru winced. Still nothing over the radio. "Let's get going. How much time do we have?"

George glanced at his chrono. "Four minutes and twenty seconds."

"Stuff all the—great." Shizuru reminded herself as she led the way out that knocking George over the head and slinging him over her shoulder would be about as productive as chatting up some lab assistant's PDA. _Later_ , she admonished herself, and tried not to look like she was in too much of a hurry. No one was supposed to be in here after hours except security, and they didn't leave during the night. Scientists had to get locked in from time to time. Shizuru figured they just stayed there until morning, hence the lab assistant and her PDA. Unfortunately, it had taken all the twins' ingenuity and three hours of hacking once they were actually on the planet's surface to coax the pass codes out of the system. The codes reset themselves every twenty minutes. This plan hinged on speed: if George and Shizuru couldn't get in and out in that window they were pretty much dead.

They came to a door. George fell on it without being told. Shizuru kept a rein on her impatience while he unwound the cable again and plugged it in. The seconds fell like boulders in a mountain-sized hourglass. George tapped in something, then did it again, his frustration clearly mounting.

"Just open it already," Shizuru snapped. Even through the garbling of the decryption algorithm, she was certain she'd already heard this song three times. "We'll just have to risk it."

"Screw me with a cattle prod," George swore and hit the button. The door opened with an almost orgasmic sigh. He stared at it blankly.

"Whatever." Shizuru grabbed George by the collar and yanked him through. He stumbled along after, trying not to trip over the dangling uplink cable.

"Oy, cap'n," Fred's voice sounded, tinny, though the radio. "Company, A and two."

Headed for the lab. "Got it. George, door."

"Righ'."

Under George's prompting, the door sprang open almost immediately, voicing a sound of guilty pleasure.

"I hate these doors," Shizuru complained. "When we're done with this, remind me to find out who makes them and shoot him."

"SIRIUS Technologies," George supplied.

"Company!" Fred interrupted. "Two, B and closing."

"Ahead?"

"Clear for now."

"Good. Keep a weather eye; we're going to make a break for it," Shizuru told him.

Shizuru sprinted off down the corridor, George on her heels. If she remembered right, there was only one more door between them and the outside.

"One more coming up!"

"Where?" gasped Shizuru.

"Nn—on your right."

The corridor came to a hammerhead. Shizuru pounded around the corner. "I was going left anyway."

"Hey!" a shout rang out from behind.

"First group's reached the lab," Fred informed them.

"Give me the bad news, will you?"

"Uh, the guy behind you's called for backup?" offered Fred.

Shizuru growled. Another corner. The door was in sight. George put on a final burst of speed and passed her. Shizuru wheezed annoyance at him but said nothing. The noise of boots was now audible behind her.

"Damn." Shizuru slammed into the wall next to the door just in time to see the ranks of nonsense on George's tablet vanish beneath a bouncing yellow circle inscribed with a smiling face.

"Drop it!!" The voice shattered Shizuru's rising panic. She turned to face the security guards with it clattering around her feet.

The next thing Shizuru knew, she was being dragged backwards through the door. It slammed cheerfully in her face.

"What was _that_?" Shizuru demanded.

"Don't talk, just run," George advised.

They made it across the compound and over the ornamental fence with a conspicuous lack of pursuit, spotlights and klaxons. Making a sharp turn, they slid down a ravine, Shizuru still clutching the refrigerator unit's handle.

The shuttle was parked in a field nearby. Shizuru heaved a sigh of relief when she saw it over the lip of the ravine. She was never sure in these moments whether she was glad living shipboard kept her from smoking too much or if she just wanted a cigarette.

"Care to explain what happened back there?" It wasn't really a question.

"Well," began George after the shuttle's hatch was secured, "nothing more than an incidental stroke of brilliance, really. I uploaded a virus into their network. Wasn't sure about it at first, of course. Blighters have an A-rate system. Fred'n I cooked it up for laughs like, because how could we deliver it? Physical mechanism in the door's all we could risk buggering with. And I mean, you'd never let us _use_ it, not at all secretive, viruses. Chaos and glorious malfunction. Plus there was always the chance that it'd blow the place sky-high. Paranoid feng kuang de nutters. So I set it t' go off about when it was time we were gone."

George was grinning with the force of a supernova. Some people never changed. Rather than smash his face into the controls, or possibly just her fist, Shizuru powered up the shuttle.

"—came off magnificently!" George was rhapsodising as they lifted off. "Going to have to remember that double-sided bit on the—"

"Could you pretend, just for a minute, that you have a brain?" Shizuru's voice was flat as week-old Sparky Cola. "What if it was detected? What if it triggered a lock-down? It could have put a big, neon sign saying, 'Intruders here! Please fry 'til crispy' on every channel in the complex the second you delivered it. _When_ did this become a good idea in your head? Fangzong fengkuong de jie."

George's glee was untamped, though he made efforts to convey a world of hurt, hurt and betrayal, with his eyes.

"I do _too_ have one, it wasn't, and that's exactly what it did. Genius, see?" George ticked the points off on his fingers. "It wouldn't've, anyway. It would've led them to that lab-assistant bird. And the opportunity was just too good to pass up."

Shizuru sorted though his gabble and fixed on the important part. "Are you insane? Did you _want_ to trap us in there with the people wanting to kill us?"

"That's the beauty of it. The virus was like a glove. It wriggled into that universal system of theirs, that one they won't let anyone take anything out of, and assimilated. All I had to do was tell the virus to let us out."

"What if it hadn't worked that way?" Shizuru grated through clenched teeth. _Is there a god for the_ captains of fools and madmen? Peace, grant patience.

"Oh, I figured we'd be long gone by then."

"Obviously, we weren't, dickhead." Shizuru sighed.

The _Heart of Darkness_ was growing in the window, barely visible against the black between the stars. It was a Shentian GG80, a slip-ship, made for stealth and illegality and finicky as a pedigreed glass-bird.

"Shuttle to the _Heart of Darkness,/i >."_

_"Here, cap'n my heart," Fred greeted her._

_"Hey, what'm I, chewy liver?" protested George._

_"Just clear us for dock," Shizuru pled._

_"You are cleared, shuttle. How'd it go?"_

_"Just tickety-boo," George volunteered before Shizuru could say anything._

_"Docking." The shuttle hit home with slightly more force than was unavoidable._

_Fred met them at the airlock. He immediately swept up George, who emerged rubbing his neck absently. Shizuru left the tomato with the two of them, bouncing like excited five-year-olds, and headed for the bridge._

_"What's up?"_

_"We just broke orbit. There's a lot of activity around one of the spaceports, though." McHenry was less than bright-eyed and alert at the controls. What did a body have to resort to to get a sense of urgency from these people?_

_"Get us out of here fast. I want to run as silent as we can. You hear that, Oz?"_

_"Every word. Also prepping for evasive action."_

_"Let's hope we don't need to."_

_"I think we'll need to," McHenry broke in. "Looks like a leg-ship."_

_Shizuru's eyes fixed on the scanner display. He was right. Once of the specks clustered around Casanoi was coming after them, and it was gaining._

_"Judging by how difficult it was to make off with this thing, what would you want to bet it's armed, though?"_

_"Shiny," McHenry muttered._

_Shizuru watched silently as the leg-ship closed in._

_"You gonna do something about that?" she asked finally. They were almost in firing range._

_"I—" The ship rocked violently with the familiar shock of weapons fire. Shizuru's jaw clenched. McHenry's indifference had been gradually clearing. Now he looked _angry_. He punched in ship-wide. "Everybody, hang on. Oz, I'm going to need a hundred-fifty degree down-angle in about forty seconds. Give me some spin if you can."_

"Right. Kuwabara, get to those lateral thrusters."

Another lurch. _And here I was hoping no one would be shooting at me after we lost the war._

"Now!" McHenry shouted and bore down on the steering grips. Realisation kicked in a second before the inertial dampers and two seconds after it was too late.

" _Are you out of your_ mind?!" Shizuru shouted, clinging to a chair for dear life.

The _Heart of Darkness_ had been accelerating up out of the Casanoi system as fast as Oz could push the engines. The idea was to avoid the local space-junk while getting the hell away with as much speed as possible. They weren't just slipping back down and trying to lose themselves in the mix, oh no. McHenry had sent them plummeting straight into an _asteroid belt_ at _full speed_. Granted, the idea of cover was an immensely appealing one at the moment; but the notion of aiming for a densely packed field of rocks, each of which was _forty times their size_ , would've gained something were their current velocity several orders of magnitude less than it currently was.

Oz's voice came crackling up from the engine room. "Hey, Shizuru, this isn't a bad time to ask about that assistant again, is it?"

"What, Kazuma isn't good enough for you?" Shizuru asked over the screams of _Aaahg, please don't eat me!_ emanating from the auxiliary drive compartments.

"Something tells me this ain't the favourite part of his duties."

"We'll have us a discussion if you can keep Mark from blowing us up long enough to make port." Shizuru eyed the nearing asteroid belt and bit her tongue. _You can pull up about any time now,_ she urged him silently.

They weren't going to make it; if Shizuru had still harboured any doubts, this would have laid them. No way Mark could level off this now before they hit the belt. Going through it at this velocity, it would be either unholy luck or impossible skill (Shizuru didn't want to contemplate which) if they didn't smash into anything and explode into a million shiny fragments. On second thought, Shizuru hoped it would be luck; if it were luck, this would suck all of it out of the system and leave their pursuers hurtling through a singularly uncaring stretch of large, solid asteroid. It had to be one of the _stupidest_ things Shizuru had ever seen anyone expect to pull off. Too, there was the added fact that most of the other contenders had ended up dead. Shizuru arranged herself with more dignity and watched grimly as they made the plunge.

McHenry's face had lost all of its vagueness. He was for once bending his considerable powers of concentration on the immediate present. McHenry had absolutely no intention of crossing the asteroid belt. He waited precisely two and one quarter seconds after _Heart of Darkness_ screamed past the first asteroid before tugging calmly on the controls and levelling her off. Beads of perspiration started running behind his ears as he dipped and darted the _Heart of Darkness_ around the barrage of obstacles in her path, desperately not-thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong.

"Come on, baby," McHenry breathed. He was the ship. He _was_ the ship.

"There he goes. He just bashed into an asteroid. Now get us out of here."

_Right. Away._

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"McHenry! Mark. Out. Up. Now."

 

McHenry set the autonav, sat back in his seat and sighed. Space was clear around them as far as their sensors could sweep. He never saw the blow coming.

"You might like to warn a body next time," Shizuru reproached him as he sat up, rubbing his head.

"I did. I said 'everybody, hang on.'"

"I know explanations aren't your strong suit, but I really don't think it'll damage you to be more explicit." Shizuru's voice was gradually on the rise. "Could you have cooked up a more hair-brained stunt, or is this the bottom of the barrel?"

McHenry looked thoughtful. "Well, if we had two mechanics, I'd have flipped us over at the end of the dive and gone in the opposite direction."

Shizuru said a remarkably loud nothing on which McHenry was about to comment when she sighed and left.

 

Oz staggered into the kitchen, smudged artistically with grease. McHenry slid his mug of coffee across to Oz when he sat down, feeling somewhat guilty.

"How is it?"

"Nothing's broken. I think we might have some ion dust in our filters but I can shake it out." Oz took a gulp of coffee and almost spat it out again. That was a really interesting expression on his face. McHenry smiled a bit.

"Houzi de pigu, that's foul," Oz choked. He took a closer look at McHenry. "How long have you been sitting here? That's practically a sentient life-form."

McHenry didn't look up, just twitched. Oz raised his eyes to see Shizuru entering from forward.

"The next idiot redhead sets foot on my ship gets shot." She looked like she meant it.

McHenry twitched again. Oz decided to change the subject. "So how was the illicit activity? What's the verdict? Vegetable? Electronical? Animal?"

"Still no pursuit. Are we going to make it to Jarvis in one piece?"

"No permanent damage. Flushed out the thrusters but good. We're running on silent for now anyway, until I get a chance to clear the microfilters," Oz told her. He glanced back and forth between McHenry and Shizuru, neither of whom was looking at the other.

"Kazuma still in one piece, too?" Shizuru asked.

"More or less. I think he's sleeping it off."

Shizuru grunted and drifted over to the cupboards. The digital clock above them proclaimed it to be late. He wasn't really hungry, Oz decided. Just sort of...spaced. Was this what McHenry felt like all the time? Probably not. This was that McHenry _looked_ like all the time. Oz wasn't sure McHenry's mind ever stopped rolling. Exhausting way to think. Oz dumped the coffee and headed for his bunk.

 

McHenry followed the sound of water to the shower, dropping his clothes on the floor of Oz's room along the way. He stood for a minute tracking the little eddies and Brownian motion of the steam before sliding the shower door back and climbing in behind Oz.

"Need someone to wash you back?" he asked, slipping his arms around Oz's waist.

"Hey," Oz greeted McHenry, leaning into him. "Mm."

"Hm," agreed McHenry. He traced space-routes absently on Oz's wet stomach. "Have you ever wondered about showers?"

"Showers?"

"Well, have you ever been on another ship that has showers? It's not what you'd call standard issue."

Oz pressed himself back against McHenry's hard-on. _Tease,_ a silent reproach. "It's the engine."

"The engine gives us showers?"

"The engine produces excess water; have to use it up somewhere. Aah." Tasted like engine grease, not soap yet. McHenry hmmed and dipped his hands lower.

"Is that the way engines usually work? Hey!" Oz chuckled and pinched McHenry's ass again

"Don't know how the engine works."

McHenry stared at the hair plastered to the top of his head. "What d'you mean, you don't know how the engine works?"

Oz shrugged. "No one knows; that's one of the problems with this make. I know how it's put together and what to do when something goes wrong, but damned if anyone remembers how the central mechanism does what it does. It's leftover tech from the migration. More sophisticated, but it's harder to handle."

"Harder, hmm?" Oz's thigh was slippery under his hand as he thrust shallowly against the small of his back. Oz responded by linking his arms behind McHenry's head, twisting his head over his shoulder for a kiss.

"I have to tell you," McHenry felt Oz's lips graze his jaw, "—oh dai ruo mu ji—that was some seriously hot flying."

McHenry grinned and gave Oz's cock another pull. _Never do it without you_ , he might have said, breathing the humid air in through his mouth and letting it warm him all the way through, because Oz replied, "Hell, no; anyone else'd get your ass blown up."

"You can blow up my ass," McHenry whispered into Oz's ear, which got him a groaning laugh, that or the way their thrusts were getting faster. Oz rocked back to meet him, warm flesh sliding against his, feeling the shivers along his spine. This part of McHenry's mind lost itself entirely to Oz's skin and his sounds. He pressed open-mouthed kisses along Oz's arm and shuddered himself when strong fingers slipped into his hair. When McHenry came, his head sagged over Oz's shoulder and he brought Oz off with a few final, twisting pulls until they both slumped against the wall of the shower.

After a few minutes, Oz grabbed a washcloth and snapped it at McHenry's thigh. "Now you can scrub my back."

 

Yusuke yawned and watched the shadows out of the corners of his eyes. Everything ached, right down to his toenails, and it was barely breakfast. Or whatever. Stupid training. At least he was done fasting. _That_ had sucked. If Derevko was going to consider murder attempts part of his education, the least she could do was not starve him to death on top of it, the loony bint. How she found the time to hound him like she did and still run things, Yusuke had no idea. He thought she had him night-side, but it was hard to be sure. He was pretty well isolated from everything, down to his meals and computer access. Meals he ate with Derevko or alone, sometimes with the goons. Computers were remarkably absent.

Normal people in themselves were a novelty. Cee didn't count. According to Derevko, he wasn't even human. Yusuke would've been more inclined to scoff if he hadn't seen the guy first. He had interrupted Yusuke's training once. Yusuke hadn't been able to takes his eyes off him.

"Yusuke, this is Terrance Cee. I believe I have spoken to you of one another."

They exchanged guarded nods, sweat beading on Yusuke's hairline and prickling uncomfortably over his scalp. Cee conversed quietly for a moment with Derevko, then left. The door slooped shut behind him.

Derevko turned to find Yusuke trembling, those lovely brown eyes of his wide with fear. Not at all how he regarded her; even now he met her eyes.

"What the...what the hell _is_ he? There's something wrong with him," Yusuke stuttered.

"He's a vampire," Derevko told him.

Yusuke stared at the door Cee had left through. "This is nuts."

Just thinking about it again made Yusuke's skin crawl. Forcefully, he shook it off, hunching his shoulders and glaring at the floor in front of him. His hands clenched rhythmically in his pockets.

 

The double doors of Derevko's lavish control chamber slid smoothly closed behind them. This time it _was_ Oz at Shizuru's back. McHenry was in the pilot's seat, ready to make tracks as soon as they were finished here.

"I have it," Shizuru announced.

"Captain Kuwabara. I was just about to have some tea. Please, join me."

They advanced to a low table along the same wall as Derevko's throne. Oz took up position behind Shizuru as she seated herself. One of Derevko's servants appeared and poured steaming water from a tastefully understated teapot over the curled tealeaves.

"Did you experience many difficulties?" Derevko was perched on a small, cushioned step at the base of her throne, just high enough to make sure that Shizuru, sinking into the rugs on the other side of the table, had to look up at her. She claimed one of the cups and spooned a dollop of honey into it.

"Nothing we couldn't handle."

Derevko smiled. "Wonderful. It pleases me to see that you're safe."

"I'm at least as pleased as you are."

 

Yusuke looked at the door. Then he stopped. He looked left and right. For good measure, he rolled his eyes upward and looked at the ceiling. Yep. Totally and completely lost.

"This is so _stupid_ ," Yusuke complained. As close as he could figure, he'd been here for two months now, and he _still_ couldn't find his way around. This entire level of the station seemed to be reserved for Derevko's private use. Whoever'd designed it deserved a swift kick in the pants. He kind of thought it had been Derevko. She _definitely_ deserved a swift kick in the pants.

"Yusuke Urameshi."

Yusuke's perceptions swirled on their heads as he realised it wasn't the _place_ that had him disoriented.

"Turn around."

The words cut through Yusuke's confusion and he spun to face Cee.

"Terrence." Yusuke attempted to inject a trace of mockery into his voice, but it sounded wary even to his own ears. "You want somethin', or are you just gonna stand there being freaky?"

The look Cee gave him was, if anything, more contemptuous than ever. _Great. He sneers and I get the shivers. He does anything, I get the shivers. I am not a vibrator, gorrammit._

Cee's fist came out of nowhere. There were stars, and stumbling. Some of Cee's lackeys (they were standard issue lackeys, really, but right now they were obviously following Cee's instructions and so once Yusuke stuffed Cee's legs to the kneecaps up his own butthole they would share the pain) blocked him in.

Another punch, then a kick; they kept connecting. It was all Yusuke could do to keep his ribs intact. His punches missed; his blocks were in the wrong places. Cee wasn't faster than some people he'd fought before. Stronger, maybe, but not faster. Yusuke'd landed hits on Derevko (occasionally); her henchman should be _easier_. He just—couldn't concentrate. It was like the only part of his brain that'd ever shown up for duty (according to some people) had suddenly decided to skip town.

"Gorrammit!" Yusuke swore, jumping back. He had just enough time to wipe the blood from his mouth before one of the back-up singers shoved him forward. The feeling of Yusuke's fist on his face was all manner of satisfying. He levelled a glare at Cee. "I thought I told you to stop being freaky."

This time, Cee _was_ faster.

"You misremember," Yusuke heard Cee's cold voice say as he slipped away into unconsciousness.

 

_Bwack._

_Bwack bwack kaZOOT!_

"Mom, I am going to _kill you_." Just when he thought she couldn't sink any lower.

Yusuke worked his mouth a little. It was...dusty. Dry, too. When he rubbed the back of one hand over his eyes it felt gritty. The hell...?

Something warm was beating on his face. When Yusuke peeked up at it from under his arm, it proved to be the sun. He blinked and sat up.

Pain. Bruises. Dirt of the planetary variety. This was already more normal than the last time he woke up somewhere with no memory of getting there. Plus, he still had his clothes on.

"Gorrammit, I'm gonna kick your tailbone so far up between your shoulder blades, Cee, just as soon as I get back up there!"

Yusuke paused as another _kaZOOT_ sounded and he realised that he was standing in the middle of some sort of unpaved lot shaking his fist at a strangely un-grey sky. Not a lot. Waaay too big too be a lot. The only thing over two feet high he could see were the half-dozen or so slumpy blue things with floppy ears and wicked black beaks, sort of a cross between a pathetic haystack and an armadillo. They were kind of hard to keep track of on the off-blue dirt and the subtle patterns on their scaly hides made Yusuke dizzy if he stared too long.

There had to be water somewhere. People, something. Yusuke didn't feel starved or drugged. Probably, Cee had just dropped him on whatever the fuck planet was below Jarvis. Yusuke spared a moment to wonder why Cee had bothered to announce himself if he was just going to sucker punch him anyway. Things Derevko had said made it sound like there was some sort of serious opposition here, so there had to be a spaceport. That meant city. Well, one direction was as good as any other. Yusuke started walking.

Yusuke hated the country; a few miles was more than enough to remind him of that. The sky was not the overpowering vastness he'd experienced on the _Heart of Darkness_ , but it ballooned outward in agoraphobic primrose wonder like some kind of limbo. Heat rose in green ripples, giving Yusuke the weirdest sense of unreality. He felt almost as though he could reach into the sky and pull down the rain like a curtain.

With effort, Yusuke dragged his attention back to the ground. The blue things were still keeping pace with him, well out of arm's reach, legs invisible below their fringy hides. There was barely so much as a rock to stub his toe on.

Light collected on the creatures' black beaks and made them ominously shiny. Yusuke wasn't sure, but he didn't think that was quite what light was supposed to do. He tried to count the things, but they kept bubbling out of the ground and sort of deflating back into it.

Yusuke was starting to consider the possibility that he'd eaten some bad fruit (that much fruit wasn't good for _anyone_ , he didn't care what Derevko said) and was now higher than the Zouprom palace on Londinium. _Deja-vu, too. If this is a hallucination, my back-brain is drastically boring._ Where was the booze? The naked dancers? The fighting for his life, or at least giant techni-colour bugs popping out of the sky and trying to teach him the bosanova? And on top of it, it felt like a re-run. He felt gypped, was what.

 

"If you're wiling, I have another job that would benefit from your services. Provided, of course, you have brought what I asked for."

Shizuru removed the strainer from her cup of tea to a ceramic holder. The first sip was scalding. Whatever else one might say about Derevko, her tea was always hot.

"Go ahead."

On cue, Oz produced the refrigeration unit. Shizuru held the next swallow in her mouth and let the astringency play over her tongue as Oz slid the unit onto the table, beside the last cup of tea.

 

Yusuke blinked. The spot he was staring at on the freaky green horizon retained its bluer tinge. Blue. Water was blue. Water was good. Yusuke stopped, sucking in the abrasive air. This wasn't nature, it was an _oven_ ; and he'd been in it forever. At least, the sun was in a radically different location than it had been when he started, unless he'd managed to get turned around.

 _C'mon_ he told himself. _just a little farther. How far can it be?_ Yusuke ground back into motion. I mean, it's all flat ground. _He staggered another few steps, slightly more certain._

__Right. Water. There's the plan. Now try running. I don't think I can take much more of this,_ Yusuke thought grimly. At least he'd outpace his floppy blue entourage._

Or not. The things popped and inflated like time-release versions of the souffle Keiko had made once. Lights started dancing around them, the pastel heat-waves come in to roost. Green and wet. He was getting closer, his face bathed in refreshing coolness. The thought gave Yusuke a new burst of energy.

He was delirious, of course.

A piercing shriek crashed through Yusuke's heatstroke. Less than three seconds later, the thing that made it crashed into him.

"Waukah," croaked Yusuke in a rather pathetic manner as he fell. A great deal of undignified flailing and inefficient thumping of fist on hide ended in contact with something hard and painfully hot.

"Ow! What! The! Fuck!" With much effort, Yusuke managed to kick the thing off. At which point three more of them landed square on top of him. Something hard sliced into Yusuke's arm. It burned.

"Xi niu!"

"Focus."

"Stop bothering me, old lady."

"Concentrate, minor league."

" _Go away!_ " Yusuke punched the thing on his arm squarely in the side of the head. It responded by digging in deeper. "Waagh."

"Are you prepared to listen to me now, or am I going to have to wait until you lose the arm?"

Yusuke didn't respond.

"I will admit to being slightly disappointed, minor league. You might have retained _one_ thing I taught you."

"Will you _shut up_ ," screamed Yusuke. He was on his feet and mauling an innocuous patch of air with glowing fists. One of the scavengers took the opportunity to get a hold on Yusuke's ankle. Yusuke fell on his right arm and the creature attached to it. Socking it to the one on his ankle resulted in a nauseating crunch like clubbing a candy-coated melon and an even more nauseating spray of slimy blue-grey particles.

At that point, the other scavengers decided that this particular piece of meat was not quite so dead as they preferred, and maybe they should wait a while longer or perhaps just pack it in for they day and go sun-bathing. Accordingly, they turned away from Yusuke and began quickly to lump off in a generally southwards direction.

"Oh no you _don't_ ," sputtered Yusuke who, it should be noted, was still not thinking very clearly and lunged after them. "You don't get away that easy."

Yusuke grabbed one, or rather landed on top of it. Alarmed by this unexpected reversal, the thing blared a panicked _kaZOOT_ and disappeared into the blue dirt, taking Yusuke with it. Yusuke yodel-croaked a direly unhealthy sound when they broke ground, cut short as the creature sank once more. It bucked him above and below, stitching a frenzied line across the arid flats. Yusuke had visions of leaving important pieces of his anatomy scattered in their wake.

When it collapsed, it was sudden. Yusuke was thrown from his hot-cold fugue on the domed back. He bounced and rolled a few limp paces and then lay still. The creature's sides heaved weakly for a minute and then it, too, lay still. Around them, the blue plains stretched, baking.

 

It was a beautiful day, simply glorious. Not a cloud to be seen in the entire sky. Quiet, except for the engine's muffled purr. Already there were four carcasses in the back. One or two more and she could call it an early day. She was almost to town anyway; she could make a night of it.

Hello, what was that? Lying out there all alone and uneaten. The Thorntons moved in herds. It was very unusual to see a dead one, of course, let alone—she shaded her eyes—two?

She jumped out to take a closer look. "Well, I'll be. You aren't a bird at all, are you?

Nudging him tentatively with her boot provoked a groan. She crouched down and, biting her lip, rolled him over as though she were afraid he'd explode.

She heaved a sigh of relief; no especially ghastly wounds, just a couple nips. He was in rough shape, though. Clothes all torn and covered in dust. That shiny black hair had looked like a beak from the distance.

"Haven't seen _your_ face before. Must be new hereabouts." She pulled out her canteen and unscrewed the top. A _local_ boy wouldn't be caught here without water. A few drops produced a heartening consciousness.

"Bingo," she said, satisfied.

"Water..." he croaked, pawing at her hair.

"Whoa now." She brushed his hand aside and brought up the canteen. "Here you go. But not too fast, now; you're awfully dehydrated."

He tried to grab it from her, but she fended him off easily.

"That's quite enough for now. Do you think you can stand up? ...That's right, into the hovercraft. Oof, my you're heavy. What've they been feeding you?"

"Brussel sprouts," he muttered.

"Oh, _that_ won't do. You need a good, grey-blooded meal in you."

She left him in the passenger seat and went over to inspect the other body with her club.

"Hide's in good condition," she said to herself. "It's your kill; I suppose I'll just have to take it in payment for the transportation." Cheerily, Botan slung it over her shoulder and dumped it on top of the other carcasses in the back of the hovercraft.

Her rescuee was watching her muzzily as she hopped back into the driver's seat. She turned a dazzling smile on him.

"I'm Botan, by the way. You might've heard of me if you've been here any time at all. Here," she said, handing over the canteen, "but don't overdo it, now."

"Thanks," he replied after a couple swallows.

"Oh, no problem at all. I could hardly leave you _lying_ there. Come to think of it, how _did_ you get all the way out here? It's not exactly an afternoon stroll."

"Looks like I just wasted an afternoon, then." He took another drink.

Botan started up the engine. She stood and squinted skyward to get her bearings.

"Oh my! You haven't been out here all day, have you?"

"Well, kinda. Depending on how long I was knocked out," he appended thoughtfully.

"It's a miracle you weren't eaten! Or baked to death." Though he'd come awfully close on that last. Botan shuddered as she hit the acceleration. Her passenger yelped and fumbled the canteen.

"Whoops! Hold on," Botan told him cheerily.

"What, is your natural hair colour blonde?" he snapped.

"Now, now, you shouldn't say things like that." Botan waved him down.

He made a very interesting sound. "Hands on the wheel!" His face was turning funny shades too. He was liable to give himself heatstroke again.

"Anyway, I dye it like this for camouflage."

"Camouflage?"

"Oh, you know." Botan flapped her hands. "Anything that isn't blue stands out horribly on these flats. Hey!"

"We're gonna crash into something!"

"Don't be silly, there's nothing to crash into. And get off my lap," added Botan huffily. "Honestly. Don't they teach young people manners anymore?"

He winced in the process of extricating himself. "Nah, it must just be an old lady thing."

 _That_ did it. Botan sputtered.

"Old lady? _Old lady?_ I'll show _you_ old lady!"

Botan calmed down, eventually, and her passenger's white-knuckled grip on the side-casing eased, though he kept shooting unsettled looks at her for a while. Well, good.

"Hey, so what's with all the whaddayacallits in the back?"

The question caught Botan off-guard.

"I'm a trapper, of course. No one much off-planet buys the meat or the hides, but the beaks, now, that's where the _real_ money is. Very unusual properties, as you must be aware. Don't think I didn't notice those love-bites. Not to worry, though; we'll get you all patched up once we hit town. You'll be fine in the meanwhile: the beaks cauterise as they go."

Silence fell between them again.

"Are you alive over there?" Botan poked him curiously.

He growled. "Piss off, I'm thinking. There any feds in town?"

"Yes," Botan answered cautiously.

"Good. I gotta see 'em about something."

Interesting, though not necessarily in a good way.

"If you say so."

 

It was going on dusk by the time they reached town. Botan pulled up in front of the outpost. She waved to the men on guard outside the gate.

"Gracian! Park this out back for me, will you? There's a dear." Botan nudged Yusuke in the arm and slid out. "Is the major busy?" she asked the remaining fed as the hovercraft whirred away.

"Not that I know of, ma'am," he replied.

"Good, we need to speak with her."

The fed shot Yusuke a suspicious look but waved them through. Out of the corner of his eye, Yusuke saw him talking into his cuff.

Botan led the way through a surprisingly primitive building scarcely cooler than the outside to an office in back with large windows onto the hall. Yusuke could see several people moving around the room through the slatted blinds and half-open door. Their voices drifted into silence as he and Botan approached.

"Hello major!" Botan exclaimed brightly, throwing back the door.

The major was a tall, hard-eyed woman whose authority in no wise suffered from the fact that she was built like a stackhouse and stripped to her undershirt in the close, lingering heat. Around the room, collars were open, uniform jackets unbuttoned, and sweat soaked through decidedly unregulation rumples. Every hip, however, bore a holster; and every eye was on Botan and Yusuke in the doorway.

"Botan. What brings you here?"

Botan clapped Yusuke heartily on the back. "I found this lying on the flats. He wanted to see you, or I wouldn't be here, of course. You might want to take care of these scratches of his. I think I'll go down to the Three Horn for a few hands of six-card Warhoon."

The major nodded.

"You're on your own," Botan whispered in Yusuke's ear as she turned and left.

Yusuke glared briefly after her, then turned back to meet the major's expectant gaze. He waited until Botan's footsteps had receded into silence before he spoke.

"How would you like a chance at Derevko?"

 

"Why should we trust you?" the major asked through Yusuke's loud griping. Unshakeable, the medic continued bandaging the gash on Yusuke's leg.

"You think I wanna be stuck up there in Paranoia City with the crazy old bat for the rest of my life?" The next time Cee tried to kill him, Yusuke felt he would be much more direct.

"I'm still in favour of arresting him." The tall guy next to the major didn't even bother to lower his voice.

"For cryin' out loud!" Yusuke flung his arms in the air until the pain hit and he doubled around his arm, nursing it.

"Hey hey hey," protested the medic. "Watch those stitches."

Yusuke ignored him.

"You want the layout of the place or not?" he addressed the major's shadow.

"I think you'll tell us anyway."

 _This is starting to piss me off._ "Hey, pal—"

"For god's sake, will you just—just sit down?" the medic complained, holding Yusuke still with a hand on his shoulder.

"I suppose you want to walk into Derevko's snake pits, then."

"Derevko doesn't have a snake pit on that space station."

"Gee, I wish someone had told me that before I _slept in them_ for two weeks." Yusuke glared belligerently into the fed's ocular replacements.

"That's enough." The major stepped between them. Yusuke flickered a glance between her and stone-face.

"Look, you need intel and I need transport. Once we're up there, we go our separate ways.

"And after that?" pressed stone-face.

"What happens, happens." _I hope I get to kick your ass into your eardrums._ The well-masked satisfaction on the fed's lined face said he was thinking the same thing.

 

"Thank you," Derevko said, putting down her tea. She slipped out a cipher card identical to the one she'd given Shizuru and inserted it above they keypad, which she tapped in a complicated pattern. According to the terrible twosome, the keys were biometrically hoojiggered to some insane degree. Shizuru's key had been good for one use, and the refrigeration unit didn't start up until the lock was engaged. Derevko didn't take chances.

Derevko reached in and lifted out the still-glowing fruit. She turned it over in her hands. As she examined it, a genuine smile lit her face. Shizuru realised with a chill how strained Derevko looked, lines crinkling across her face, and how the tension in the air was not her own private apprehension. Something was up. _Just so long as it keeps its nose out of my business._

"I trust you find the merchandise satisfactory," Shizuru prompted. The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to be here.

Derevko glanced up. "Oh, yes."

A faceless minion came over and whispered something in Derevko's ear.

"And what about the other matter?" Derevko asked her in a low voice.

"Nothing as of yet, ma'am."

"Very well. This won't take too much longer. I want more information when I'm done here."

The minion bowed and skittered on her way. Shizuru, who had been politely scrutinising her fingernails for lack of safe places to keep her attention, now looked up. Derevko met her eyes with a look that raised Shizuru's hackles on tent poles and waved them in the air. She waited, trying not to give anything away.

Derevko smiled again.

 

Someone rounded the corner and stopped. Yusuke continued on. Behind him, the footsteps resumed at a faster clip, closing the gap. Yusuke flicked a tense and irritated glance at his unwanted company. It was one of Derevko's security goons, a young guy he'd seen with Murray trailing after Derevko and Cee. Eager and puppy-faced.

"Hey, where've you been hiding? The boss's looking for you high'n low. If I were you, I'd get myself found real fast and she might not tear the niushi out of you. Time ain't going to improve her mood much."

"Buzz off and tell grandma she can stick it where she likes. I'm gonna see my old buddy Terrance and pop him one." Yusuke cracked his knuckles in a show of anticipation.

"But—"

"Scram!"

The idiot took one took one look at Yusuke's face and fled.

 

"Alright, everyone," Major Kusanagi began as soon as Yusuke was out of sight. "Batou, take your men and tail Urameshi. I don't want you to apprehend him until he's got whatever it is he's looking for. Everyone else spreads out and looks for Cee. Saito, Quinn, you're with me. Let's move it!"

 

A few crossed wires and he was in. Once the guard was laid out, Yusuke worked his shoulder thoughtfully and stepped in over the sprawled meat-head. The bites still twinged, but much less now they'd been cleaned, sewed and run under fancy medical whoosits.

"Well, here's nothing," Yusuke muttered to himself. He picked up the book and turned to leave. Terrance Cee was standing in the hall outside. "Like I didn't see that one coming."

"You are looking for me. That's foolish." The look Cee had for him was rife with active disdain.

"What can I say? I didn't expect you to fall for a lie that obvious. I think I might be insulted." Yusuke narrowed his eyes in an effort to see past whatever it was about Cee gave him the unholy jitters.

Cee made no attempt to prevent Yusuke's movement into the hall. Cold blue eyes darted to the book tucked under Yusuke's injured right arm. In the slight changing of his posture, of his focus, of his eyes, Yusuke knew he was about to strike. Lovely.

Yusuke ducked the first punch and came in under Cee's guard in time to get a foot in his gut. He landed bad and felt the stitches pulling. Right arm, right leg. Gorram nature. _Concentrate_ , he heard Derevko's voice in his head. Yusuke snarled.

Block. Uppercut. Dodge. Roll. Sweat was beading on Yusuke's forehead from the sheer effort of keeping his eyes on his opponent. Kicking was just a bad, bad idea. Oh, bad, oh, _gaisi_.

"Commander! Both targets this way!"

Fuck, feds. Yusuke rolled painfully to his feet and sped off in the opposite direction, Cee hard on his heels and a thunder of feds rumbling closer. Cee slammed into Yusuke, pinning him to the wall. Clutching the book with all his determination, Yusuke shoved him away with more than natural force and stumbled desperately forward. He was almost, _almost_ there, and gods hope he hadn't lost himself. These corridors were harder to navigate than to remember. He staggered into the door and banged it open (this door was never locked). Cee's face collapsed in an agony of incredulity as he lunged after Yusuke.

The shouting behind redoubled as the feds realised where Yusuke was headed. He heard the major's dour shadow yelling for someone to get to K corridor. Cee flinched back from the uneven footing the seething mass on the floor and continued more cautiously. Yusuke concentrated.

Cee gained while Yusuke was climbing the other side one-handed. Yusuke grit his teeth and tried not to look at his arm or be distracted by the creepy movement. _Extra weight,_ he told himself, _it's just extra weight. Aw, who the hell am I kidding?_

The second entrance was clear when Yusuke hauled himself over the edge; however, he'd barely got his feet under himself before two feds came pounding towards him. Yusuke yelled, charging.

Snakes flew through the air. Feds screamed. Yusuke ran past, free and clear.

All this racket had to attract attention sooner or later. Time to be elsewhere. Yusuke came to an intersection and turned at demi-random, still shedding snakes. Well, it _felt_ like the right direction.

 

The money was finally on the table. Now was the time to take it and get good and out of here. Shizuru was having a bad feeling about the smile plastered on Derevko's face and the fact she hadn't done speaking yet. Time and more to leave this place behind.

"...and please, don't be a stranger. I can always find work for someone of your talents," Derevko was saying. A side door Shizuru had rarely seen used slid open and disgorged a federal marshall.

" _Freeze!_ " he shouted. More poured through behind. The other two entrances, side and main, sprang wide for the feds. Shizuru took the opportunity to pocket the pouch on the table. Now, standing back to back with Oz, she felt resignation pour over her like cold rain. Her hand and Oz's hovered over guns: in all their dealings with Derevko, her parents had never surrendered their weapons and Shizuru had seized on their precedent with due gratefulness. In this place, there was no knowing what lines of fire would be drawn.

The clerks stood with their hands up, plastered against the walls. Derevko set down her blasted tea and stood, one hand lingering idly on the arm of her throne. Probably no one else could see the hurried working of gears behind those dark eyes. Derevko glanced, once, at Shizuru and Oz, estimation or calculation; and someone trained his rifle on the unnoticed presences.

"Hold it, buster," commanded a wholly unexpected voice.

Shizuru refocussed her eyes. Yusuke looked like he'd gone head-first through a cement mixer. He was thinner, firmer than when last she'd seen him. His clothes were ripped and smudged with blue, and bruises peeked around the bandages Shizuru could see through the holes. Yusuke stood at an angle to the large fed who had his gun aimed at Shizuru and Oz, only half through the doorway and masked to the room by the man's muscular bulk. In his right hand was something Shizuru couldn't see, but his left was raised at the fed, hand pointing like a gun at the man's head.

"I'd find somewhere else to point that if I were you," Yusuke advised. "Captain, you better come with me."

Shizuru shot him a glare that said, quite simply, _if you get me shot, you're dead,_ then fixed her eyes back on the man with the real gun, which hadn't so much as wavered. She didn't move.

"Lower your rifle, moron, and let the nice people out of your crossfire."

The gun twitched uncertainly, or maybe it was just the man's eyes.

"He's bluffing!" Someone had worked himself along the wall to a better vantage. "It's just his hand!"

Yusuke's fed turned, about to club Yusuke down, and then:

"Bang," flat and final as the fed fell limply forward.

"C'mon, " Yusuke yelled to her—no, to Oz—and the three of them fled.

"Take me with you and I'll get you to your ship," Yusuke offered as they ran. He was limping.

"Agreed." Shizuru hoped to hell he knew where he was going. The sound of gunshots erupted behind them, growing fainter.

"So much for Derevko," Oz said with equanimity.

"I doubt it. The old bat won't go that easy."

"You've certainly been busy."

Shizuru looked questioningly at Yusuke's back in front of her. There was something moving under his shirt. Loose end of bandaging? Shizuru wondered, until Yusuke reached in after it and drew out a pale grey length which writhed and tried to wrap itself around Yusuke's arm.

"Euuck," he said, and tossed it away. "Snake."

"Nasty," Oz commented. Shizuru only raised her eyebrows.

They ploughed through the mildly panicked chaos of the docks to _Darkness_ 's berth, Shizuru ordering McHenry to launch-prep over the radio and verbally kicking Kazuma's ass into the engine room. The hatch opened easily for them, and they were home.

"So what's with the book?" Oz was asking.

Shizuru spared a glance to see that yes, it was a book Yusuke'd been carrying all this time, then switched from the radio to the intercom.

"It's for my posture," Yusuke snapped back grumpily. "Can we please get moving?"

"Keep your pants on," Shizuru told him, and was glad Fred and George weren't there to make clever remarks. "Whatever. We're in; anytime you're ready, McHenry."

"Gotcha, captain."

Good. Shizuru drew a breath, her first in it felt like hours, and aimed herself at the bridge, then paused. Oz was staring at Yusuke, who was defiantly not toppling face-down on the decking, as he obviously was ready to do as soon as they turned their backs. Oz flicked an almost guilty look at Shizuru and retreated engine-wards. The clank of decoupling echoing around her, Shizuru continued down the stairs.

"Well away, captain," McHenry greeted her absently. "Did you enjoy your tea?"

"Aside from Derevko, the feds and the gunfight, just peachy. Anyone tailing us?"

"Not yet. I didn't think you liked peach tea."

Shizuru sighed.

"We did get paid, right?" George piped up.

"Right?" Fred echoed.

"Yes, now stop bouncing and find something useful to do. Monitoring the station's comm-traffic, for instance." Shizuru faced the shadow lurking at the edge of her vision. "I think I'm about to have me an enlightenment."

 

Shizuru watched in silence as Yusuke walked out the door to the kitchen. She'd known for a while there'd come a time she had to break with Derevko. Considering the conversation Yusuke's feds had interrupted, that hour had perhaps been coming on apace. What Shizuru had not been counting on was earning a place of honour for her head on Derevko's wall. She'd seen Derevko's expression when Yusuke'd busted them out. Shizuru would live a week on Kazuma's high-surge energy beverage of vim and power, guaranteed to put a spring in your eye and a sparkle in your punch, if Derevko didn't know whose ship had brought her...apprentice...to Jarvis in the first place. Not funny at all.

The sound of raised voices on the other side of the door-hatch culminated in a meaty thud. Yusuke'd beat the pants off Kazuma twice during the first trip to Jarvis.

"Idiots," she remarked to Oz, who had wandered in sometime during the last ten minutes of Yusuke's explanation. "I'm going to have to put a leash on one or both of them before the day's out."

"At least he's not a redhead," Oz said in that deadpan of his.

"Then say 'thank you'," Shizuru told him. Two could play at that.

"Thank you?"

"You wanted another mechanic. Keep him and Kazuma from tearing the ship apart, will you?" Ah, yes: delegation. She won.

A different thought occurred to her, less encouraging. Was it wisdom to set the spooky leading the weird? Or just perversity? Shizuru's perversity was no news to her crew.

Well, fuck. _This_ was going to be fun.


End file.
